EYES OF THE SERPENT (1994)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological*

EYES OF THE SERPENT is a weird beast. On one hand, it's just another micro-budgeted sword-and-sorcery romp in which none of the actors can fight and they just tromp around through some forest and a few very limited sets. On the other hand, the script has some odd twists I didn't see coming-- though the twists may have been nothing more than a bunch of pot-smoking writers tossing out the first ideas that came to mind.

The "eyes" of the title are actually twin magical swords, which were bequeathed to two royal sisters by their patriarch. There's a snatch of odd Biblical imagery in that the narrator says that the Eyes represent the snake who guards Paradise-- I guess as this fantasy-world's version of the archangel Michael playing sentinel to keep humanity out of Eden. The swords themselves don't really evoke either eye-imagery or serpent-imagery. But it's of passing interest that the descendants of Adam and Eve were often involved in dynastic quarrels. A lot of S&S movies also involve such quarrels as well, though EYES may be the only one where all the disputants are female.

The two royal sisters are blonde Neema (Lisa Toothman) and brunette Corva (Lenore Andriel), and at the start of the movie, Corva has not only taken over the castle of their late father (whom Corva may have poisoned), she's also acquired Neema's sword. This means that Corva can wield supreme power if she can figure out from some scrolls how to use the two swords together. Neema had taken to the neighboring forest with a handful of followers in the hope of raising a rebel army. We will find out at the very end of the film that the patriarch gave the swords to the sisters because he knew they'd fight over them and destroy one another (sorry I gave away the big twist ending). The script offers no reason as to why the ladies' daddy thought they ought to destroy one another, though their mutual evil makes Neema's virtuous daughter Fiona (Diana Frank) look pretty good by comparison.

Another item Corva (who dresses in a S&M outfit) has acquired at picture's opening is Fiona, but Corva doesn't hold her niece long. To that end we're introduced to Corva's daughter (Carlton Lynx), who bears the name Raven, which is pretty much equivalent with the meaning of the Latin word "corvus." Raven bears Fiona some vague grudge-- something about envying Fiona's "ruby red lips"-- and so she corners her captive cousin in Corva's castle, planning to torment her with her S&M whip. (Did I mention that Raven dresses just like Mom, while Fiona and Neema both wear standard S&S attire?) But Raven apparently wants to beat up Fiona fair and square, and despite some back and forth shots Fiona knocks out Raven, and escapes the castle, heading for the forest to find her mom.

Guards pursue Fiona, and then we see that the only reason she was at the castle at all was so that she, the heroine, could have a "meet cute" with the movie's sword-swinging, patch-eyed hero Galen (Tom Schultz). Galen just happens to be looking for some just cause to defend, and so his routing of Corva's guards gets him in good with both Fiona and her mother. This seems a little over-enthusiastic, for Galen is a bit of a weirdo. The first time he meets Fiona at the side of a river, he invites her to bathe with him. Later when Fiona complains that she's taken a wound that's swelling, Galen starts talking about how he has something that's swelling, also. Did I mention that he doesn't need the eye patch and keeps switching it from eye to the other as the mood strikes him?

Nevertheless, those two crazy kids Galen and Fiona fall for each other, and Neema makes Galen the head of her non-existent army, though, as one wag noted, there's barely over a dozen actors in the whole film. In one of the odder twists, Neema gets the idea of controlling Galen through sex and comes on to him. Being an honorable dude despite his weirdness, Galen rejects Neema and gets slapped for it. A little while later, he does the decent thing and tells Fiona about her mother's transgression, and Fiona slaps him too. Dudes just can't be honest with women!

There are also some time-killing scenes at Corva's castle in which various characters plot against each other. None of these are important, though Corva does change her general into an iron-masked berserker just for kicks. But the upshot of the story is that Corva finally confronts Neema in single combat in the forest, bringing along both swords so that the two of them can duel properly, I think. Their dialogue reveals that each was jealous of daddy's attention to the other sister, though I'm not sure how that was supposed to tie in with Corva knocking off her old man to take power. The climactic battle leads to the magical immolation of both sisters, leaving the field clear for Fiona and Galen to take over the kingdom. I can't remember what if anything happens to Raven.

The dialogue, whether colloquial or psuedo-knightly, is uniformly stupid, but although the characters say a lot of goofy things, the writers didn't manage to come up with the sort of truly demented dialogue of an Ed Wood, not even when Galen calls the iron-masked warrior "spittoon head." I will note that the script's heavy concentration on female power (even though none of them can fight well) is atypical for the genre, and so is the fact that the romantic couple are co-equal stars in the narrative, rather than the female lead simply being the girl the barbarian gets to bed by movie's end. I don't imagine that any feminists would be impressed with the fact that all four female characters are well-coiffed beauty-queen types, but that fact does make EYES a little bit easier on the eyes.